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Published: October 20th 2005
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10th October - Halong Bay (I think this one is going to have a lot of photos)
It is almost time for us to leave Vietnam and we are getting very excited about journeying into China. Before that though, here is what we've been up to in the last week or so.
From Hanoi we booked a trip to Halong Bay. As a general rule we try to stay away from organised tours as you tend to feel a little herded around and have to do everything according to someone elses timescale but for Halong Bay it just worked out easier.. and cheaper.. to book it as a package, so off we went. It got off to a fairly bad start when an hour into the trip we were 'unexpectedly' taken to a handicraft shop to look around, this is standard practise as they get commission on anything bought and this one seemed a particularly popular place to bring the tourists as they were at least 10 other minibuses/coachloads of people. They don't list that on the itinerary! Will and I didn't even leave the minibus, whether we were making a stand or just being miserable b@stards is debatable
😉
But when we got to Halong bay we were impressed with the boat that we were on and the others in the group were nice so we started to feel a bit more optimistic. We cruised around Halong Bay which is a very pretty archipelago of around 3000 limestone islands. We visited one of the naturally formed caves and later went kayaking in a very peaceful lagoon and we had a bit of a swim. Well, Will did anyway, I gave the swimming a miss after spotting a couple of jellyfish whilst kayaking!
That evening we spent the night in a hotel on Cat Ba island which is a national park. The next morning we visited Hospital Cave where officers were treated during the Vietnam war which would have been a bit gloomy and depressing had it not been for the Vietnamese ex-officer who showed us around. He couldn't speak English but he sang a great song that they used to sing to keep their spirits up and it was all Will and I could do not to laugh as we clapped along to his booming voice.. you probably had to be there! The rest of the
group went trekking up a hill whilst Will and I opted for a bike ride down to the sea. It was lovely, if a little hilly, and we stopped with our guide on the way back to sample some local delicacies of corn and beans cooked in sugar water and fresh watermelon. Mmm. That night we slept on the boat which was a good laugh. We learned a couple of dice games from some german guys on board and then slept soundly due to the relaxing sounds of waves gently lapping against the boat (or maybe it was the beer!)
On the last day we had a slight problem when the boat broke down but luckily they quickly organised another one which took us out to another area of the bay for more swimming and kayaking and some eagle spotting (sea eagles apparently). I swam this time but didn't have the courage to jump from the top of the boat as some of the others did! Maybe next time!
We made it back to shore and returned to Hanoi intending to spend a couple of days resting before our trip to Sapa (and the mountains!!) only to find
that the hotel had messed up our Chinese visa and only got us 2 months instead of 3 which means that we will have to apply for an extension during our time there. Not ideal. We spent 3 hours arguing with the hotel staff about the mix up before they admitted that it was their fault and accepted the discounted price we offered. It was all very stressful!
We got out of Hanoi pretty quickly in the end, it's not a place we grew fond of and now we are in Sapa which is set in a beautiful valley in the north west of Vietnam. We only arrived at 6am this morning so haven't had much of a chance to look around yet but I wanted to get my Halong Bay photos online pretty quick as from my first impressions I have a feeling I'm going to want to take lots of pictures in Sapa too!!
Right, I am off to get some fresh air.
xxx
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